Iomega makes fastest CD-RW drive available in India

SINGAPORE: Iomega has announced the availability of its latest and fastest

CD-RW drive, the new 16x10x40 external CD-RW drive, in India. The new drive

supports the new USB 2.0. It features 16x write speed across the entire disc,

allowing users to 'burn' a 60-minute audio CD in less than five minutes, or back

up a 500 MB file in under eight minutes.

It has 32x digital audio extraction speed and can rip a three-minute song

from a CD in six seconds. The CD-RW drive also features Buffer UnderRuN

protection. The drive is available at a retail price of Rs 13,000.

Iomega is looking at the CD-R business seriously and focussing its attention

on 'Peerless', a 20 GB drive. Sanjeev Gupta, marketing manager, Asia South,

Iomega, said that there is a major consolidation taking place in the CD-R

business and Iomega wants to pick up a large share of the pie.

Meanwhile, Iomega claims the closing down of its Indian office has not

affected its channel programs. The Iomega-certified partner program has taken an

upturn, with over 250 partners enrolling in it, claims Sanjeev.

The company wants its partners to inform users that a conventional floppy is

not good enough for storage. "Every important and valuable data needs to be

stored efficiently and backed up constantly. Hence, the importance of Zip disks

and drives," he said.

He added that the price per megabyte for a Zip disk works out to be lower

than an ordinary floppy as the former can store information equivalent to that

of 173 floppies. "So, Iomega's focus on Zip disks and drives

continues", said Sanjeev, who wants the channel partners to aggressively

market these products to professionals and individuals within the enterprise

segment.

"Our products have longer life-cycle," said Sanjeev, adding,

"We don't want our partners to lose money on stocks." So, Iomega makes

its products easily available in India through three distributors -- Neoteric

Infomatique, Ingram Micro and Tech Pacific.

Sanjiv is also looking for a steady growth since market segments are nowhere

to reach saturation point for Zip disks and drives. "We are at an infant

stage of growth," said Sanjeev who wants partners to explore the potential

of storage and back-up business.